


are you really gonna love me when i'm gone?

by freefallvertigo



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Everybody Suffers, F/F, Like seriously dark, a little smut (as a treat), dark!Doctor, if ur heart can take it i believe the ending is worth it lol, the angst is heavy in this one lads, the humanity switch AU literally nobody asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:27:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22639234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freefallvertigo/pseuds/freefallvertigo
Summary: Believing Yaz to be dead, the Doctor makes the conscious decision to turn off her humanity. Flick the switch. Go dark.A month later, Yaz turns up alive and not-so-well in Sheffield, but the Doctor has long since lost her way and has no apparent interest in allowing Yaz to save her.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 51
Kudos: 287





	1. has anyone seen yaz?

**Author's Note:**

> Humanity Switch: a plot device lifted from The Vampire Diaries. To turn off your humanity is to disable all emotions, both good and bad. Typically temporary if an emotional trigger is strong enough to break through.

* * *

**ONE MONTH PRIOR**

* * *

"Yaz, you really need to get a move on!" the Doctor urged, hands pressed flat against a set of blueprints spread out atop the desk before her.

"I think I see it, Doc," Graham said from behind. He was peering through a scientific telescope angled high through the window at their backs. Ryan stood beside him, anxious eyes darting occasionally up at the sky as if he might be able to make out a single thing from where he stood.

It wasn't supposed to have happened like this.

None of it.

Purely by chance, whilst the Doctor had dropped by in Sheffield to pick up her companions, she'd intercepted an encoded frequency from an obviously alien source. Curiosity inevitably piqued, the four of them investigated. As it happened, a spacecraft was hovering unseen at the very edge of the atmosphere. The Doctor promised her friends that they _would_ get to go see the real lost city of Atlantis, just as soon as she got past their shields and had a quick look.

The craft turned out to be an unlicensed and extremely illegal slave ship. Apparently, the slavers had elected humanity to be the next victims of the despicable trade.

There was never any question, after that, of the team's involvement. Never any question of them putting an end to it. And for a while, things were running smoothly. Whilst Graham and Ryan helped to free the captives already on board, Yaz and the Doctor had distracted the slavers with clever monologues and sneaky underhand tactics. Sneaky tactics, of course, translated roughly into them running for their lives as a diversion.

A series of unforeseen mishaps later, however, and the situation had taken a major turn. The slavers had gotten away, but they had freed all the prisoners, so the Doctor decided to rig the ship to self destruct while her friends piloted their respective escape pods back to earth.

The Doctor boarded one of her own, countdown ticking. She ejected from the main craft; hurtled back towards the fields of Sheffield. Then Ryan was in her comms.

"Yaz? Yaz, I thought you were here already? Where are you?"

The Doctor's hearts had plummeted. 

“Has anyone seen Yaz?”

They'd tried and tried to get a response out of her but to no avail. And when the Doctor landed, the three of them raced back to the TARDIS only to find that it was missing, and suddenly the Doctor realised why the slavers had so easily allowed them to locate their transport beam and leave her timeship unattended. It had all been a ploy. 

The Doctor had walked right into a trap and hadn't seen it until it was way, way too late. The slavers had wanted the TARDIS - fine. They were never getting into that thing anyway. But Yaz? Harming Yaz was crossing a line from which there was no return. 

After an age, her voice came through, but it was groggy and infused with the static of great distance. "Doctor?" had been the first thing she'd said.

Something had happened. They'd knocked her out, left her there, knowing the Doctor had rigged the ship and apparently finding it all to be terribly amusing to leave her to a fate of the Doctor's very own design. But the Doctor knew where their ground station was; where to find the blueprints of the ship. If she could only direct Yaz to her pod, everything would be fine. She would be okay. She had to be. 

So that's where they were. In a dingy office, poring over plans of the ship, desperately trying to find a way to guide Yaz to safety. Except-

"Doctor, I swear, there's no pod here!" Yaz shouted, and the Doctor felt her stress like an invisible string connecting them both, pulled taut along the endless space separating them. "I'm - I'm following your directions. I'm here. But _it_ isn't!"

"Then you're not there! I told you, it was two lefts, a right, up the stairs and all the way at the end of the hall! Get that?" The Doctor glanced at the timer she'd set up on the desk and her blood ran cold with dread. "Yaz, you've got less than two minutes."

"It's a red door, Yaz," Ryan chimed in. "With a yellow handle. Y'can't miss it."

"Doc, she's gonna make it, isn't she?" Graham whispered.

The Doctor ignored him; kept her back to both he and Ryan. "Yaz, listen to me, there are no other exit routes for you that I can see. This is your only option. It has to be there. Find it."

"Doctor," Yaz started. The Doctor heard her choke on an uneven breath. Real fear was setting in. "Can't you just come get me?"

"Oh, Yaz, I am so sorry," said the Doctor. The ache in her hearts felt solid as rebar being driven through her chest. "I can't. Not this time. This time you've gotta save yourself. Just this once, and never again. I promise."

"There's only a minute le-"

"Not helping, Ryan," the Doctor cut him off sternly. "Yaz. You should be right on top of it now from what you told me."

"I should be, yeah. But I'm not. Your map's outdated," came Yaz's quiet response, and it sounded so much like giving up that the Doctor felt sick to her stomach with it. "It's over, isn't it? Really over, this time." 

"It's not over until I _tell you_ it's over!" she said, shaking with rage and something else she refused to name.

"Doc." Graham attempted to rest his hand on her shoulder.

"No." She shrugged him off. "Yaz. You are not allowed to fail this time. You're not. Get in the pod and come home."

"I'm sorry I let you down, guys," Yaz said. It sounded as if she were trying to be strong; to hold back the flood. "But I want you to know that I don't regret any of it. Not a single second."

"Yaz, stop," Ryan cut in. A tear tracked down his cheek. "Don't you dare."

"Ryan, Graham - you _are_ my family. I don't have long enough left to tell you how much you meant to me but I hope you already know."

The Doctor's legs felt like they were about to give beneath her. "Yaz-" she choked out. "You're wasting time."

"And Doctor," Yaz pressed on. Her name on Yaz's lips sounded like the saddest smile. "Oh, Doctor. You probably already know exactly what I'm about to say. You've probably seen it in the way I look at you. But I have to... Wait. Something's-"

Static.

The timer went off.

The Doctor's entire body went slack.

"Yaz?" Graham shouted. " _Yaz_? You still with us? Doc, what's happening? Now's not the time to go mute!"

Ryan bolted for the door. Graham was right behind him, but the Doctor - she moved slow. She moved as if her ankles were tethered to lead balloons; as if her bones were built from concrete. The volume on the world depleted and when she eventually pushed open the door out onto the field behind the building, she couldn't even react to what she saw.

Fire in the sky.

Meteors of metal and carbon hurtled towards the earth in the aftermath of the ship's explosion, painting the horizon with streaks of orange and red and yellow. And black. There was smoke everywhere.

The blaze turned the frozen tears in the Doctor's eyes molten. When she blinked, she cried lava. 

Yaz.

Her Yaz.

Turned to ash; falling like snow.

* * *

**PRESENT DAY**

* * *

It was snowing.

The streets of Sheffield howled their bitter song like wolves in the wind.

It was quiet at this time of year; students gone home for the holidays and the sub zero temperatures keeping most off the streets. A train, half empty and Manchester-bound, left the station with a deafening roar over the tracks.

A lone figure trudged through the snow. Duffel bag slung across their shoulders, they kept their head ducked and their shoulders braced against the cold. Time had passed, yet still their feet found the familiar path as if by instinct. Instincts which, until very recently, were believed to have been lost forever.

Oh, but now.

Now, home was a real, solid place. Home was a train station, the grey campus buildings in town, the night club at the end of the street outside of which a few drunkards staggered and swayed. Now, there was not just a name to cling to but also a feeling of having belonged somewhere, somewhen. Mirrors were beginning to mean something again. Speaking of mirrors -

Dark eyes hitched on an old flyer attached to a lamppost, one corner flapping in the wind. It was half succumbed to water damage and the picture had faded and blotched, but the likeness was indisputable. 

_**MISSING**_ , it read, in bold red letters.

Somebody was missing that girl.

She beamed with brilliant white teeth. That smile - so fucking alien. What was she laughing at? Who could even say? A disembodied hand lay on her shoulder, the face cropped out. Where in the world was that other face? Did they have a name and a home, too? 

Flyer torn to shreds in gloved hands, the traveller pressed on. With every step, their footing felt surer and the cold less bitter. Lights glowed from the high rises, warm and orange, and guided the way like stars. How could any of this ever have been lost to them? How could it have been so easily cast away? 

Uneasy fingers tried the handle and it gave without resistance. Only one glance over a snow-capped shoulder. Something, right there, missing from the sidewalk. Something important. Another time.

It was warm enough inside the complex that the parka's hood was removed to reveal long hair, dark as those eyes. It was down. Wavy. It didn't sit right that way; wanted to be something else. Something difficult to place. Like so much else.

Boots thudded softly up the stairs one at a time. Steady. Slow. Take it easy. That head still hurt something awful at times.

Moving like a ghost along a dimly lit hallway that never before seemed to stretch so long (presumably), the lone traveller felt longtime weariness yield to something dully familiar but long since shelved.

Hope.

It was all here, exactly as was imagined. No, not imagined. Remembered. Those memories were real and this was the proof and on the other side of that door-

A clenched fist hovered millimetres from the wood.

Two lungs filled. Held. Deflated.

When the knocks came, they echoed, and the brooding darkness only amplified them tenfold. Felt like they were still echoing when, seconds or maybe minutes later, light pooled out onto the carpet through the gap beneath the door. A single set of feet shuffled resignedly across creaking floorboards. The traveller did not breathe. Did not move a muscle.

Every excruciating moment of the past four weeks had been guiding them precisely to this moment and if it turned out not to be what they believed it to be - if it was all a lie - then they had nothing and this was all for nought and they might as well just put a stop to the hurt.

But then the door opened.

And of course it was never going to be anybody else, was it? Because this was their home, and standing there with awful bags under her eyes and a dressing robe pulled tight around her, was their mother.

"Mum?" The word was hardly a whisper, as if in speaking her name too harshly they might blow her away. Again. _Please_ , prayed the traveller. _Don't blow away_. 

She gasped, this woman, who looked so frail compared to the oft revisited image of the strong and gorgeous and maternal figure they'd been latching onto like a lifeline. But it was her. Undeniably her.

"Yaz?" croaked she.

To hear _her_ name - a name she hadn't ever been truly certain belonged to her in the first place - fall without hesitation from the lips of her mother. Well. That was it. That was what this had all been for. Except. Except where was the relief behind those tears? Why did she look so frightened; so fucking haunted?

"But - but you're dead," she stammered. "I don't underst - you're dead. I buried your body three weeks ago."

* * *

**THREE WEEKS PRIOR**

* * *

Graham and Ryan wore the same suits to Yaz's funeral that they had to Grace's. 

It wasn't until the procession was over and they were making their way to the wake at Yaz's flat (no, not her flat. Not anymore), that Ryan remembered the loose button on his shirt cuff. He didn't want to show up and shake hands with her parents when the button on his cuff was loose. He couldn't be so brazenly disrespectful. 

"It _is_ important, Grandad," Ryan stressed, fidgeting with his cuff. They were standing outside the complex. "It's Yaz's family. I can't let them think-"

"They won't be thinking about the buttons on your shirt, son. Believe me." Graham gave Ryan's shoulder a squeeze. "That's the furthest thing from their minds today. C'mere."

When Graham pulled Ryan in for a hug, he reluctantly stopped himself from fiddling with his sleeve to reciprocate. He'd told himself he wouldn't cry today. He'd keep it together for her family, for her memory, for himself. He would. But that _fucking_ button. His entire body shook with the strain it kept to cling onto the last of his resolve.

"I can't believe she's really gone," Ryan choked into the padding of Graham's jacket. "And where the _hell_ is-"

Then came that sound. 

Once, the sound had meant so much to Ryan. It had meant hope, safety, adventure, family. Now, as the TARDIS phased into view at the corner of the sidewalk, wheezing and gasping all the while, all it served as was a bitter reminder of the gaping loss they had all endured.

They pulled apart as the Doctor stepped out into the cold streets of Sheffield. Sober eyes fixed on Graham and Ryan, she buried her hands in her pockets and allowed them to approach. 

"Where have you been?" Ryan demanded. "The funeral started over-"

"I couldn't face that," the Doctor said quietly. "Couldn't very well look her family in the eye knowing the part I'd played in Yaz's death." 

"We missed you," Graham offered. "Didn't think we'd even see you again after..."

A violent image sprung to the forefront of Ryan's mind. The Doctor, stony-eyed and still as a corpse, standing over the bodies of the thieves who'd stolen the TARDIS and stranded Yaz on board a doomed ship. Merciless was not typically a word Ryan, or anybody, would have associated with the Doctor. Then, he'd never seen her like that. He'd never seen anything like the way she'd hunted them like dogs and revelled in their pleas for life while they burned. The curl of her lip - it was as if she'd enjoyed it. She'd exuded so much hatred that Ryan swore he could taste it like blood in his mouth. 

Even though it had terrified them, they'd decided to let it go. Because this was Yaz, and they were all grieving and heartbroken and not entirely themselves. They were all angry. So when the Doctor let them burn, Graham and Ryan didn't dare get in her way. As if they could have done a thing to stop her.

"Are you coming inside, then?" Graham asked, nodding towards the building behind them. "I know it's a tough one, but I'm sure they'd love to see you there."

"Funeral's aren't really my thing."

"Yaz would _want_ you there," objected Ryan.

"Yaz is dead." This, the Doctor said so sharply that neither Graham nor Ryan could help but flinch.

Graham exchanged a glance with Ryan and cleared his throat. "Doc, look, I know you blame yourself for what happened but it really wasn't your fault. Yaz was supposed to have gotten out - we all thought she had. She'd hate to think you're becoming someone you're not because of her."

The Doctor tried an appreciative smile but it was so painfully empty and devoid of its usual colour that it might as well have been a sob.

"Why are you here then?" Ryan chimed in. "If not for the wake?"

"I'm here to give you this," said the Doctor. She reached into her coat pocket and withdrew an envelope. "Read it later. When you're not - when you're alone."

"What's it say?" Ryan said, accepting the letter.

"Does it explain how you came up with a body for them to bury?" Graham asked. "Doc, we saw that explosion. There was nothing left. Just rubble. No way there was a body left to drag out of the wreckage after that."

"Yeah, but her mum identified her. In a morgue," Ryan pressed. "Said the cause of death was a bad fall?"

When they'd heard the news that Yaz's body had turned up a week after she'd died in that explosion, Ryan and Graham had tried ceaselessly to contact the Doctor for some kind of explanation. Radio silence is all they were granted in return. She’d gone off the grid without a word, leaving Ryan and Graham in the lurch alone.

"The how doesn't really matter, does it? What matters is that Yaz's family doesn't spend the rest of their lives waiting for a girl who's never-" The Doctor clenched her jaw. Ryan saw her fists flex in her pockets. "Who's never coming home."

"Doctor, you have to come inside. Stay for a bit," Ryan pleaded. "It's Yaz, we're on about. Not some stranger. She means something."

The Doctor frowned at Ryan. "If what I did to those creatures doesn't prove how much she meant-"

"You didn't do that for her," Graham refuted softly. "You did that for you. She'd have hated to see you like that; to see you going against everything you believe in and everything you've ever preached to us. Doc, we saw you spill blood and smile while you did it. It was..."

"It was me," the Doctor finished, curt and detached. When her eyes cut between Ryan and Graham, in them was that same barren brutality she'd exhibited for Yaz's killers. "It was the side of me I never showed you before because I didn't want you to be frightened of me then."

"And now?"

"And now you're attending the funeral of your closest friend." The Doctor lowered her eyes, shaking her head imperceptibly. "Maybe you should be frightened."

"You're leaving," Ryan said. "Aren't you?"

The Doctor lifted her head only to gaze past them at Yaz's flat. "In a sense, I s'pose I am. It's all in the letter I gave you." Then she looked at them, really looked at them, as if she were committing their faces to memory. Maybe she was. "Well. See ya then."

"What, that's it? That's all you're gonna say?"

The Doctor shrugged. "What else is there?"

"Doc-"

But she was gone - vanished back inside the TARDIS with a lacklustre sweep of her coat. And moments later, that old blue box groaned its possibly final goodbye without further ceremony, leaving Graham and Ryan to stare solemnly at the spot where it once had been. 

* * *

**PRESENT DAY**

* * *

The more time Yaz spent with her family, the less of a total stranger she felt to herself. Slowly, it became easier to sort through the two decades' worth of memories constantly bombarding her; easier to peer through the haze of confusion and disorientation.

Yet explaining how she'd risen from the dead had been an unwelcome chore. How had there been a body if Yaz had never died? She was certain the others would be able to explain, but for now she settled on a feeble excuse improvised on the spot - something about how her top secret involvement with a special branch of the force had required her to fake her own demise.

"But I identified your body," her mother had said, trembling.

"It's mad what they can do with prosthetics these days."

Obviously they had been livid, and relieved, and so extremely confused. But above all, her family had been so unbelievably happy to see her that they let the lie slide and simply welcomed her back to life. She'd given herself all night and most of the next day with them, but she desperately needed to see the others. It was killing her to know that they still thought she was dead. 

Which is how she found herself at Graham's that evening. After proving herself not to be a dream or a trick, they'd hugged her for so long and so tightly that it felt as if they were slotting all her errant pieces back together with their embrace. God, how she'd needed that.

She almost hadn't wanted to let go, but she had. Once they'd untangled, and wiped the tears from their faces, Graham put the kettle on and they settled down at his kitchen table.

"I still can't believe it's actually you," Ryan was saying, staring at Yaz as if she were a living miracle. "How did you escape? Where've you been?"

The kettle came to boil and Yaz winced when it screamed, bringing two fingers to her temple. The pain came and went. "Its, uh, it's all a bit muddled to be honest. I remember looking for the escape pod and - and finding something else. It was like this glowing blue tile in the wall. I touched it and then... nothing. Darkness. For a while."

"What was it?" Graham asked, setting three mugs down on the table and taking a seat. 

"Must have been some kind of teleportation device. When I woke up I was on Earth again," Yaz recalled. "Only, I was nowhere near Sheffield and I didn't have a clue who I was. Not even a name."

"Blimey," Graham muttered.

"Where'd you end up then, if not Sheffield?" 

"I came to in a hospital in Prague, of all places. They called me Jane Doe for weeks."

For the first two weeks, her mind had been an inky, bottomless well of pure black shadow. Absolutely void. And this void fought back whenever she tried to venture down it; sent waves of total agony coursing like electrical currents through her mind and body. The doctors were stumped.

One day, however, a sliver of light made its way through a crack in the darkness. One single image, as confusing as it was comforting: a blue box. 

"Once the first memory came back to me, the others started to follow. It was a dead slow process though, and some of my memories made, like, no sense. I thought I was losing my mind when I started remembering aliens and foreign planets and time travel. That's what the doctors thought, too. That I was mad."

Yaz had believed them, too, at times. Everything would get so fuzzy and all her memories would meld together in some horrific amalgamation of nightmarish visions and she'd be unable to tell truth from fiction or dream from reality. And oftentimes it hurt, trying to separate it all, as if she were painstakingly pulling apart the stitches that bound it all together. That was a symptom that had yet to subside in its entirety.

"But I knew," she went on. "You guys, my family, the Doctor. I knew it had to be real."

The way she'd missed them; there was no way that was fabricated. No way that was a construct or a product of some unnameable illness. Now, there was only one person left to reunite with. Her heart ached to think of her. The first time she'd remembered the Doctor, it had been her voice in her head, waking her from a restless dream. 

_You've got to save yourself... come home._

"Where is the Doctor, anyway? She probably still thinks I'm dead." Yaz would have to fix that. Now. "Can I use your phone? Can I call her? God, she must be so..."

Ryan and Graham looked severely uncomfortable at the mention of the Doctor's name. A look passed over them that Yaz couldn't identify. Abruptly, Yaz felt what could only be described as an intense _wrongness_ coil like a deadly snake around her heart, constricting almost to the point of a bloody eruption. 

"What is it?" she asked, an edge to her voice. "Is she okay?"

"Well," Graham sat up straighter. "She's alive."

"If you can even call it that," Ryan mumbled.

Yaz was at a loss. "What does that mean? What happened to her?" She'd waited so long so see her again and now - what? What weren't they saying? 

Graham heaved a sigh. Rising from his chair, he rummaged around in one of the draws until he found an unsealed envelope. He considered the envelope, considered Yaz, then acquiesced. "Here," he said, handing it to Yaz with a face full of regret. "You'd better read this."

* * *

_Hey fam,_

_The Doctor here. Possibly for the last time._

_I want to begin by trying to convey how truly, truly sorry I am about what happened to Yaz. Except I can't begin to do that until I admit that it didn't just "happen" to her. I did it. I killed her. We can all deny it until we're blue in the face, but I blew up the ship whilst she was on board and as a result, she died. That's murder. Her blood will forever stain my hands and I have to live with that for the rest of my life._

_But it's a long, long life for a Time Lord. I'm not certain I'd be able to bear it. Not this. Not right now._

_So, I'm making a call. A selfish one. It probably won't make much sense to you and if you ever have to witness it, I apologise profusely - but I have to do this if I mean to survive._

_Shortly after I deliver this letter to you, I'll be taking a break from my humanity. It's a neat little trick us Time Lords resort to when the trauma of our seemingly endless existence becomes unbearable. This is such a time for me._

_I won't go into too much detail but the short explanation is that I'll be forgoing all of my emotions from here on out. I won't be able to feel my guilt, my grief, my immense loneliness. But I also won't be able to experience joy or empathy or love. For these reasons, it is in everybody's best interest to steer well clear of me. Make no mistake, after today I will be the Doctor no more, so under no circumstances should you allow me back into your lives or your homes._

_There's no telling what I might do._

_You might believe yourselves to be capable of bringing me back to myself. You're the only family I have left, so I suppose if anybody stands a chance, it's you two. Just don't hope too hard. Some things you simply don't come back from no matter what anybody says or does. Some losses are too great to bear._

_I hope one day I'm strong enough to find my own way back to myself and back to you. If not, then this is goodbye. Forever._

_Once again, I am tremendously sorry to have caused you this pain; to have taken somebody so absolutely decent and kind and brilliant from your lives (though I don't ever expect your forgiveness in return)._

_All my best eternally,  
The Doctor_

* * *

Yaz stared at the letter for a long time.

Without question, that was the Doctor's manic handwriting, but she couldn't make herself hear those words coming out of her mouth. It just didn't make any sense. She turned the page over as if she might find a P.S.

Blank. 

"I don't understand," Yaz confessed numbly. She was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"She abandoned us, Yaz," Ryan said, bitterness laced throughout every syllable. "Didn't even go to your funeral. After she made such a big deal about my dad and everything. She's a hypocrite. She doesn't care about us and she doesn't care about you."

Graham placed a hand on Ryan's arm and shot him a look. Ryan leaned back, anger giving way to concern for Yaz. 

"Sorry, Yaz," he muttered.

"But - but -" Yaz didn't even know what to say; to think or to feel. This whole time, all she'd been able to focus on was reuniting with the Doctor, only to find out that she didn't technically exist anymore. How was she expected to process that? "Have you seen her since?"

"Once," Graham confirmed grimly. "We called her a couple of days after your funeral, when we got around to reading her letter."

"And she came?" Yaz asked, a defiant spark of hope alighting against the friction of despair.

"Wish she hadn't," Ryan said under his breath. 

"We asked her back and tried to reason with her, talk to her, but... Yaz, it was like we were talking to a complete stranger. She couldn't care less about any of us. Cracking jokes about what happened, all that. Couldn't believe my eyes, to be frank with you. Was like she were possessed by somin’.”

"Everything in the letter's true," Ryan said. "The Doctor's gone, Yaz. She ain't coming back."

Yaz refused to believe any of what she was hearing. Total bloody slander. This was the Doctor they were talking about. Selfless, compassionate, strong, dependable. She wouldn't run away. She wouldn't leave them behind when they needed her most. It wasn't in her nature.

"Give me your phone," Yaz demanded.

"Yaz-"

"I said give me your phone." She held her hand out, palm up. "I'm calling her. Right now."


	2. i always did like ‘em brave

* * *

**TWO WEEKS PRIOR**

* * *

The grass in the cemetery was blue with frost.

The Doctor showed up late.

Ryan and Graham were forced to make a double-take to ensure that it was really her making her way over the hill in a garish Hawaiian shirt, lei around her neck and palm-tree sunglasses tinting her eyes green. She spotted them and threw her hands up, exasperated.

"What? What is it?" she asked, impatient. "I was one Pina Colada away from making the wall of fame. You lot really are easily impressed by excessive alcohol consumption, eh?"

They eyed her from head to toe, lost for words. Of all the things the letter had prepared them for, this was not where either of their minds had gone. She looked like the personification of a mid-life crisis.

"Doctor..." Ryan started, still staring at her clothes. "We read your letter."

"Take off those ridiculous glasses," Graham chided. "Look around you. Show some respect."

The Doctor, for the first time, swivelled her neck around to take in their surroundings. She crinkled her nose in blatant distaste. "God, you lads really know how to kill a buzz, don't you?" She brought the glasses up to rest atop her hair and raised her brows. "Yes? So? You read my letter?"

Incredulous didn't cut the way Ryan and Graham felt about the Doctor's startlingly outlandish behaviour. "We just - we need some clarification," Ryan managed to go on in spite of the shock. "I mean, surely there's more to it. You can't just choose to stop feeling?"

"Oh, absolutely I can.” The Doctor grinned and it sent a chill through their spines. "Honestly, greatest perk of being a Time Lord ever."

"How long exactly are you planning on being like this?" Graham queried, his disapproval plain.

"Mm, was thinkin' maybe... forever? The ol' picture of morality thing were getting a bit old anyway, don't you think?" The Doctor slid her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. _Jeans_ \- the Doctor was wearing acid wash jeans. 

"But in the letter it said that you might be able to come back to yourself," Ryan remembered, allowing himself to be optimistic in spite of the spectacle before them.

"Eh, theoretically," the Doctor shrugged nonchalantly. She was not bothering to mask her growing boredom. "Don't suppose I will, though. What's the _point_ of all those emotions? Most of 'em aren't even pleasant!"

"But you can't feel the good ones either?"

"The beauty of that, Ryan, is that now I just don't care!"

"Not even about Yaz?" Graham asked, tilting his head towards the ground at the Doctor's feet and prompting her to turn and notice the headstone for the first time. 

The Doctor’s face fell. "Yaz,” she murmured. Slipping her hands out of her pockets, she brought one of them to rest on the smooth curve of the headstone. Graham and Ryan looked at one another. Might they be getting through to her? But then the Doctor's grave expression crumbled beneath the perplexing blow of a mocking smirk. She started to laugh. "Oh, the look on your faces. What, y'seriously thought I'd take one look at a slab of stone and everything would be rainbows and daisies? Get off it."

Ryan positively bristled. "That's your friend, and she's _dead._ How can you talk about her like that?"

"Oh, so what? Yes, she's dead! Humans die. All the time," the Doctor said, arms outstretched as she gestured at the vast graveyard and all its many markers of death. "Shouldn't you lot be used to it by now? It's pretty much the only thing you're good at. That, and colonialism. Neither of which look particularly good on a resume, by the way. Should really think about fleshing out your skill set."

"You know, she'd feel sick if she could see you right now," Graham rebuked.

"Well, Graham, d'you see her anywhere? Oh!" the Doctor hopped to the side and pointed to the fresh grave. "My bad! I was standin' on her." She crouched down and slung her arm over the headstone. "What d'you think, Yaz? Should I keep humouring these two morons or go back to the beach and get drunk?"

Ryan lunged for her. Graham only just managed to slip between them, holding Ryan back with a firm hand to his chest. "Leave it, son. She ain't worth it."

"But she-"

"She's not _worth it_."

Brushing off her trousers, the Doctor got to her feet. "Well, don't ever say I can't take a hint. Good catch up, lads," she called over her shoulder, already making her way over the hill with a peace sign in the air. "Do me a favour and lose my number, yeah?"

* * *

**PRESENT DAY**

* * *

The phone rang and rang and rang. 

If it had been her own phone she was using, Yaz might have been tempted to throw it at the wall and shatter it into a thousand tiny pieces. In the past, the Doctor usually picked Yaz's calls up on the second or third ring. Four was a stretch. Her calls never went unanswered; her desire to hear the Doctor's voice never denied.

When she finally realised somewhere after the thirtieth try that this was no longer the case, she settled instead on sending a text.

 _Yaz is alive. Please come home_.

Graham tried to stymie her hopes at a response. "I hate to say it, Yaz, but there's a decent chance she won't ever come back. I just don't want you thinkin-"

"She'll come back," Yaz argued. _She would come back_. This was Yaz. Whatever bullshit the Doctor was pulling, she'd snap out of it the second she realised she hadn't killed her after all. That she was alive and waiting to see her again. She had to.

"Even if she does," Ryan said. "You shouldn't set foot in that TARDIS with her."

"He's right. You read the letter, she said herself she doesn't know what she'd be capable of," Graham added. "I don't want you going and getting yourself into any kind of trouble. It's the same thing I told Ryan. For as long as the Doctor's acting like this, you'd be best to stay well away."

Yaz, who'd been staring at the phone and only half listening, decided she'd had enough of hearing about this _stranger_ who surely couldn't be associated with her Doctor in any way. She got to her feet and lifted her jacket off the back of the chair. "I'm taking this, if that's okay," she said, pocketing Graham's phone. "You'll get it back."

"Yaz, wait." Ryan got to his feet but Yaz had already stepped past him, and neither Graham nor Ryan were quick enough to reach her before she slammed the door shut behind her.

* * *

Yaz never let the phone out of her sight.

She ate with it lying face up on the table, showered with it on the toiletry shelf, slept with it next to her pillow. Every time it vibrated, her heart would flip. Usually it was just Ryan checking in. Whenever she tried to imagine the Doctor the way Ryan and Graham had described, she'd get one of her headaches. It just didn't add up; it went against every single thing she knew of the Doctor. 

Days of blue and grey passed.

Yaz struggled to assimilate into the routine of her old life. It was a tough task, given that everybody she ever knew had believed her to be dead. Work was the hardest. Even though Yaz was able to call in a favour owed to her by the Prime Minister to get her reinstated, her colleagues remained wary of her. 

Her first shift was gruelling. Not because of the trials of the actual job, or because it was Christmas Eve and that was always an interesting time of year, but simply because of how many difficult questions she had to field. It became apparent that not a single one of her coworkers trusted her anymore. One of them straight up asked if she was a spy. 

Her shift ended late. She was on her way home, wrapped up in doubts about whether it might be best to leave the force, when she saw it. 

Right there, parked in its usual spot on the sidewalk outside Yaz's building, was the TARDIS. A blanket of snow was gathering atop its roof, so thick now that it almost concealed the light fixture. She saw it and stopped and her head hurt with remembering. Pushing through the laser-like pain in her temples, she ran towards it. 

The door opened for her.

She didn't hesitate; only rushed inside, stopping only when she reached the walkway leading to the console. 

There she was - the Doctor. She had her back to the door, but it was her. In a suit, of all things. The jacket was missing, the sleeves were rolled to her elbows, and the bow tie was loose around her neck. In her dishevelled state, Yaz wondered if she might have run into a spot of trouble. Maybe that was why she'd taken almost a week to get to her.

"That you lads?" the Doctor called over her shoulder. "'Scuse the state of me; I've just swung by a wedding. Or five. One of my own, if you'll believe it. Now that was an interesting threeso-"

The Doctor turned, cut herself off when she spotted Yaz. Yaz's hearts soared. God, she'd been waiting so long. She wanted to run to her, to wrap her in her arms, to never let her go. She knew the Doctor would come back for her. She knew it. But then-

"Oh, it's you," the Doctor remarked blandly, a small frown creasing her features. "Thought Graham were pulling me leg."

The wings of Yaz's soaring heart failed. It plummeted like a baby bird pushed prematurely from a nest and crash landed somewhere in the pit of her stomach. She thought she might just throw it up when the Doctor leaned against the console with folded arms, eyeing her with nought more than mild curiosity. No love there. No relief. No nothing. Those eyes were not the Doctor's eyes and it took all of three seconds for her to realise it.

"So, go on, how'd you pull that one off? Thought for sure you were a pile of rubble."

"I..." Yaz was speechless.

"Lemme guess," the Doctor went on. "I were right all along and the escape pod was exactly where I said it would be? Told you - I'm never wrong! S'kind of annoyin' at times."

"Uh, no, actually," Yaz stammered. "There was a teleportation device on board. Some blue screen thing. Looked like a door."

The Doctor furrowed her brow. "Blue scr- oh! Ouch." The Doctor regarded Yaz from head to toe. "Bet that gave you a bit of a headache, eh? Surprised you're on your feet."

"It's been over a month," Yaz croaked. "I - I was in hospital for a _month_ trying to remember who I was."

"Yeah?" The Doctor clicked her tongue. "Well, that's just it - not everything in the universe is built to assist humanity. That's the problem with you lot: always think everything's for you. Always so bloody greedy."

Yaz felt every last lick of hope, of unfounded optimism, drain from her body with each new word the Doctor spoke. "Uh, my - my family buried a body. Ryan said you did that for them. How? How did you do that?"

"Oh, right, quick update. I don't do the whole dumb-yourself-down thing for you lot anymore. There's a set of volumes on complex organism and DNA re-composition in the library. Feel free to knock yourself out!” the Doctor said, and it disturbed Yaz that she still said everything so chipper, so falsely jovial, when the words themselves were hollow and empty and deliberately cruel.

Yaz ascended the steps slowly, fearfully. "What happened to you?"

"Told you, s'been a wild few days! Else I woulda reacted to your message sooner. Or maybe not. I'll be honest, I thought Graham were gonna attempt another tiresome intervention but the change in tactic piqued my interest." The Doctor paused mid-shrug. "Wait, is that what this is? Y'thought you might try and bring me back?"

"I just... missed you," Yaz confessed meekly. The words felt ridiculous to admit now when it was so clear that the feeling wasn't mutual.

The Doctor's smile was nothing short of totally condescending. "Cute." She ruffled the hair on Yaz's head then rounded the console. "Did y'fancy a trip? Was just on my way to watch a planet explode."

"Doctor, I'm here now," Yaz stressed, following the Doctor. "I'm alive. Can't you just turn it back on?"

When the Doctor whirled around to face Yaz, she did so in such an abrupt manner that Yaz had to force herself not to flinch away from the proximity of their faces. "I have one condition for anybody setting foot on my TARDIS, Yaz," she warned, and there was something foreign woven through her tone. Some kind of danger. Something lethal. "If you try to get me to turn my humanity back on, I'll eject you into the time vortex. If you mind your business and stay out of my way, we'll get along swimmingly. If y'don't like it, leave now. Because I'm taking off either way."

Yaz recalled the caution advised to her by Graham and Ryan. She thought about the letter, and about how the Doctor had implored them not to allow her into their lives like this. She had to admit, she was frightened in a way she'd never been frightened before. Fear of a friend is a whole new kind of terror. When that friend is an ancient Time Lord - 

But she was still a _friend_.

And she had to be in there somewhere, didn't she?

Yaz knew that the Doctor would never give up on her if the tables were turned. She also knew, fairly certainly, that if she were to leave now she'd probably never see the Doctor's face again. That seemed a fate worse than death. 

She planted her feet. "I'm staying."

"Brave," the Doctor commended, eyes dancing hazardously in the blue lights of the TARDIS. "Oh, I always did like 'em brave. Buckle up, Yaz. It's gonna be a bumpy one."

* * *

That first day spent travelling with this brand new Doctor - this unholy imitation of the woman she'd once been - was so far removed from anything Yaz had ever witnessed in her company before that she found herself constantly checking to make sure she wasn't still laid up in some foreign hospital suffering through one of her mind-bending dreams.

The Doctor brought Yaz to what she called an 'End of the World Party.' Yaz thought it better characterised as a whole host of rich pricks from all corners of the universe selecting uninhabitable or poverty-stricken planets for televised annihilation and gathering on board a distant observation craft to celebrate. The parties were laden with drugs, harsh music, sex, and general debauchery of all sorts. Long after the actual spectacle of the exploding planet took place, footage of the destruction would be projected in every room against every wall on an endless loop. 

"But they're just destroying a whole planet for no reason," Yaz seethed, as the Doctor waited amongst a crowd in one of the many observation chambers. She had dark glasses on her face to protect against the blinding light due to follow. "Can't you stop this?"

"'Course I could, I'm the Doctor. But where's the fun in that?" The Doctor snapped her fingers and one of the ushers darted over and handed her a pair of glasses. She set them on Yaz's face with a smirk. "Loosen up, yeah? S'about to start. Fancy a drink? The purple ones make you feel _really_ good. Long as you don't mind a bit of light hallucination, that is."

When the planet exploded, the Doctor was cheering with the rest of them. Yaz felt hollowed out, gutted. In truth, she'd rather have been anywhere in the universe right then, but she figured the only way she was going to get her Doctor back was to gain her trust and stick close by. If that meant making the Doctor believe she was on board, so be it. Thus far, all it seemed like was a bit of a mad bender. She could manage that.

She could pretend for a while.

Yaz pretended to drink, pretended to have fun, pretended not to burn at unreal magnitudes when the Doctor flirted and kissed and disappeared with a succession of beings from a range of species (including a Judoon). This in particular made Yaz's migraine infinitely worse.

Yaz thought maybe this was because the Doctor had been such a vital part in the reacquisition of her past. She'd been inextricably tied up in most of her more cherished memories; had been a tether to reality drawing her out of her nightmares so often. Yaz's love for the Doctor saved her.

Now, for that part of her to feel like it was changing irreparably or fading forever? She wondered if that would have any lasting impact on her wellbeing.

Of course, without the Doctor there to explain these symptoms, Yaz was purely speculating.

Maybe the migraines were simply migraines. 

At one point, many hours into a party that didn't appear to be drawing to any kind of end, the Doctor found Yaz sitting at a bar alone. She was clearly inebriated when she slung an arm across Yaz's shoulders and pushed what looked like a genuine, gem-studded crown out of her eyes.

"Think I may've just been legally coronated king of a nation whose name I can't remember. What d'you think? Does being king suit me? C'mon, Yaz. Let's dance."

Yaz masked her reluctance as best she could when the Doctor dragged her from the stool and into the adjoining room, in which the music reverberated so deeply Yaz felt her bones shake and her skull split. Her stomach twisted when the Doctor took her hand to guide her onto the dance floor. In any other circumstances, Yaz might have found the way the Doctor's sweat glistened pink and blue (then orange and red whenever the planet exploded again) to be seraphic. Yaz might have fallen at the Doctor's feet to see her gripped by such fervid ecstasy. 

As it was, she had to remind herself of the nature of this person she was beholding. And when the Doctor's lips twisted into a serpentine smile and she moved her body against Yaz's, Yaz had to force herself to draw back and not relish in the sensation of the Doctor's skin pressed up against her own. 

At some point, it became too much for her to stomach. She tried to pull away from the crowd but the Doctor anticipated her retreat. She grabbed Yaz by her forearm. 

"Y'think I don't know what you're doing, Yaz?" she shouted over the music, close enough to Yaz that she could taste the purple drinks the Doctor had been throwing back all night. "You haven't had a single sip of your drink; haven't cracked a real smile all night. I know you're not here to have fun. But I'm not. Coming. Back. Not for you. Not for anyone."

Compelling herself to seem dauntless, Yaz steeled and leaned in. "We'll see about that."

The Doctor's eyes burned something sinister. "You think this is the worst of it? You think this is as bad as it gets?" When she spoke next, she did so directly into Yaz's ear, lips brushing over skin. "I'll show you just how bad it can be, Yaz, and we'll see which of us breaks first."

The Doctor winked at Yaz. She let her go and returned to the crowd, to dance and to drink and to drive Yaz insane. Yaz didn't intend to stick around and watch any longer. The gig was up.

She headed back the way she came to find the TARDIS. Or, she assumed it was back the way she came. The place was a maze, every room heaving with sweaty bodies and dizzying with the blinding parade of exploding planets. She came to a doorway half blocked by a scaly, humanoid man. He had razor-like teeth that glinted wicked in the lights. Yaz made to sidle past him, only for him to sidestep and block her path. She gritted her teeth and tried again. Once again, he got in her way.

"Would you move, please?" Yaz asked, stern as she could manage.

He barked a laugh and all of his friends followed suit. "Why do you look so miserable?" he drawled, voice like the clashing of knives. "It's a party. Drink." He shoved a flute into her face. 

The moment Yaz knocked it away, knuckles brushing against the back of his hand, everybody in the immediate vicinity gasped. The man's eyes became slits and his scales shimmered. He took a brazen step forwards and Yaz began to panic. 

"Touching an I'llurian without permission is punishable in all corners of the universe by instant death," he growled wetly. He drew a thin, narrow blade from the hilt at his side. It was opalescent, catching and then tossing back all the colours in the room. "Do you have any last words before I slit your throat?"

Before Yaz could even think about running for her life, a hand shot out of nowhere and connected with his jaw. The impact resulted in a sharp crack audible even over the music. Yaz jumped and looked to her left. The Doctor was standing there, shaking her head as if pitying the man now doubled over and clutching his face. The Doctor stepped over him, plucked the blade from his grasp, and cut his throat with it. She pushed his body to the floor.

Yaz's jaw dropped.

"Anyone else?" the Doctor asked the room, twirling the blade expertly between her fingers. Suddenly, the room burst into chaos. Across the room, guards were running for them, and the dead I'llurian's friends all lunged forward at once. The Doctor grinned at Yaz, her pupils blown. "Never a dull day!"

When the Doctor bolted, Yaz had no choice but to follow and do her best to keep up. They just about evaded capture, bursting through the doors of the TARDIS and taking off to the tune of a dozen people banging on the doors.

Hands on knees, gulping to catch her breath, Yaz looked across at the Doctor. She was regarding the blood on her clothes with distaste. 

"Gonna be a 'mare to get this blood out," she mumbled to herself. "Black blood. How did I forget the I'llurians bleed black? Stupid!"

"You killed him," Yaz breathed, straightening at last. 

The Doctor sighed. "Yeah, maybe. Don't go on about it." 

"You never-"

"What'd I tell you, Yaz? I've changed. It's what I do. By nature." The Doctor pulled a tissue from a dispenser that had appeared on the console and wiped at the blood on her hands. "Precarious creatures, Time Lords. More fool you for ever trusting one."

But then something else occurred to Yaz, because even if the Doctor _had_ just killed somebody, had she not done it in order to protect Yaz? "You saved me."

The Doctor baulked. "I killed a pretentious moron. There's a difference. I really wouldn't go reading too much into it if I were you."

"No, you could have just let him kill me," Yaz objected. She needed this to be a step forward. She _needed_ there to be some evidence of progress. "If I'm the nuisance you claim I am, why didn't you just let him kill me? Get me out of your way? Would be pretty convenient for you, wouldn't it?"

"True, it would," the Doctor agreed, tossing the tissue to the side and taking several strides in Yaz's direction. Yaz held her breath. The Doctor stopped a metre away. Her face was dark, cheeks spattered with bloody freckles. "If I go around letting people touch my things, what does that say about me, d'you think?"

Her _things_?

"So I belong to you, now?" Yaz scoffed. 

"Like a pet."

Yaz's fists clenched reflexively. "You're despicable."

"Oh, well, if y'don't like it," the Doctor began, spinning dramatically and attaching herself to the console. She wound up a crank and pulled on the lever. "How about I set you back down in Sheffield? Christmas, isn't it? Did I say Merry Christmas? I meant to."

"I don't celebrate Christmas," Yaz reminded her as the TARDIS shook beneath their feet and made a noise Yaz knew well enough by now to translate. They'd landed. "You know I don't."

"Do I? Maybe I did. Kinda been filtering out all the useless information in my brain lately, to be honest," the Doctor said, faux-apologetic. "God, I had so much of it! Your favourite colour, the perfume you wear, the name of your mum. Speaking of, how is - what was it again? Nadia? She know you're back from the dead yet? God, I bet the look on her face were priceless. Wish I coulda been there."

Yaz only stared. For the first time, it was truly sinking in how much of a stranger this woman was. This was not the Doctor - not even a little bit. "I never thought I could hate you until now."

The Doctor started to laugh. "Ah, but y'dont, do you? Poor little Yaz and her poor little crush."

Yaz started, opening and then closing her mouth. That, she hadn't been expecting. "What are you talking about?" she asked, as if they both didn't know.

"Did y'seriously think I hadn't figured it out? I always knew, Yaz. 'Course I did. I know everything," the Doctor boasted. "You're not exactly subtle, and it's not exactly my first rodeo. Only, with the whole holier-than-thou thing I had going on, I decided not to _tarnish_ you. Poor, innocent Yaz. How could I let you love a time bomb like me, eh?"

Yaz could hear the blood rushing in her ears, the quickening pulse, the anger and the humiliation and the hurt causing her fingers to tremble. Of all the ways she'd imagined this conversation going down-

"Oh, don't be sad, Yaz," the Doctor said, mocking a pout. She came to stand before Yaz; put her hands on her shoulders. "I felt the same way, y'know? I'd have denied it 'til I were blue, but I did. When I had feelings, I had them all for you. Frankly, it drove me nuts! Humans, eh? Annoying bunch but they really know how to get under your skin. How's that make you feel? To think that once I loved you, and now I never will again?"

Yaz staggered backwards, willing away the tears threatening to spring up out of the corner of her eye. "Why are you doing this? Why are you saying these things?"

"Dunno." The Doctor gave a half-baked shrug. "Boredom? Same reason I let you stick around today, I imagine."

Yaz took a stabilising breath. "I don't believe you," she spoke through gritted teeth. "I think you're still in there, and part of you wants to come back. That's why you let me stay."

The Doctor kissed her teeth. "Thing is, Yaz, I've been messing with you all night and y'never even realised. You're so stupidly infatuated that you refuse to believe your saintly Doctor might ever do anything to hurt you. Think about it!" the Doctor urged, apparently revelling in this opportunity to taunt Yaz. "I knew that place would be your worst nightmare. I knew you'd have an awful time, and that you'd be watching me the entire night. Watching me as I kissed all those other people. Not one of them you, by the way. I hate to say it - scratch that, I love to say it - but y'just made it so incredibly _easy_."

Every word a wrecking ball to Yaz's faith; to her previously steadfast resolve. It would have been the easiest thing, after hearing all that, to run out of those blue doors and never look back. But that was exactly why the Doctor had said them. 

"We're in Sheffield. Christmas morning," the Doctor said, gesturing over Yaz's shoulder. "Go home."

"No," Yaz whispered. She felt a warm tear slip down her cheek. 

"No?" the Doctor repeated. 

"If I walk through those doors, what are the odds I'll never see you again?" Yaz asked. "You don't plan to come back here, do you?"

"Are you - did you not listen to a word I just said?" the Doctor shook her head, astonished. "I don't want y'here, Yaz. I don't _care_ about you. You're a joke to me and nothin' else."

Yaz took a defiant step closer. "You're still in there, that’s what the letter said. And the person who wrote that letter - that's who I'm sticking around for. For the Doctor who I know would do the same for me a million times over."

"Your Doctor's gone," she simmered. 

"You're wrong."

Yaz held desperately on to the memory of the Doctor jumping in and saving her from the I'llurian at the party. However the Doctor rationalised it (and even if it had been brutal), Yaz couldn't see any other justification for it than the fact that it had saved her life. Which meant somewhere, somehow, she must still have cared.

For a split second, the Doctor looked as if she were about to protest. Instead, she breathed a laugh. "God, humans really have so little regard for their own lives. Hey, Yaz, you do whatever you want. Stay, if y'wanna. Makes no difference to me.” The Doctor bared her bloody palms. "Fair warning, though: I wouldn't go wanderin' off again if I was you. I won't be wasting my time tryna find you and I certainly won't be playing white knight when you get yourself into trouble, yeah?"

"Wouldn't expect anything less."

The Doctor smiled thinly. "Well, then. You should be gettin' off to bed. S'been a long night."

Yaz knew it wasn't a suggestion. Still, convincing the Doctor to let her stay on board was a win in her eyes. "I'll see you tomorrow, Doctor."

"Absolutely," the Doctor said sweetly. "Pleasant dreams, Yaz."

* * *

Yaz did not have pleasant dreams.

She dreamed of the Doctor; usually welcome. Usually grounding. Except all her cornerstone memories of the Doctor were being twisted and reimagined under the dim light of hazy unconsciousness. She gasped awake right after she'd dreamed that the Doctor, holding that opalescent blade, was pointing the sharp end at her.

Even once she was awake, it took longer than Yaz cared to admit to see past the fiction of her nightmares and remember her reality. It was almost a physical effort; one that resulted in a splitting headache. And in truth, her reality wasn't actually all that better.

Unable to sleep after that, Yaz took to roaming the halls of the TARDIS. She'd been meaning to seek out some medicine, but the ship's winding hallways apparently had other ideas.

She came to a wooden door at the end of a very long hallway. She might have walked past it, had it not been humming. Yaz frowned. Hand hovering over the brass handle, she looked over her shoulder. She was fairly sure she could hear the distant din of the Doctor working away in the console room. If she was quick, the Doctor would never know.

The moment her hand wrapped around the doorknob, she felt that humming - a calm, soothing sound - spread from the nerves at the end of her fingertips to every far corner of her body. It felt like peace washing over her. Her headache eased some.

The lock clicked open even before Yaz tried it. This struck Yaz as odd. Had the TARDIS led her here on purpose? What was it the ship wanted her to see? 

She pushed the door open. 

The low hum became a song. It sounded like the song of the wind between forests and mountains and valleys; like nature and life and something sacred but unnameable. Yaz stepped further into the room. There were trees, almost like willows but decidedly not. Yaz walked slowly through the branches. Lights were strung up between them, glowing softly orange, painting the air with romance. 

When Yaz stepped out from between the trees, the music came to an enchanting crescendo and for a while she forgot how to breathe. She found herself at a veranda overlooking— well, she wasn't sure what. It must have been some kind of illusion. Time Lord architecture. 

In the great distance, two looming towers of stone stood proud atop an endless red landscape of sand and dust. Behind it, a setting sun, casting shadows miles and miles long. So long they almost stretched to meet Yaz. Clementine clouds drifted overhead, half scorched in the light of the sun. Yaz heard singing. Angelic, unearthly singing that prompted goosebumps in her arms and prickled the hairs on the back of her neck.

She'd never seen anything so-

A hand gripped her upper arm like a vice. 

The next thing Yaz knew, she was being thrown out of the room. It slammed behind her and she flinched. The Doctor stood over her, breathing heavily, eyes as scorching as that setting sun still emblazoned on the space behind Yaz's eyelids.

"What do you think you're doing?" the Doctor demanded, backing Yaz up further and further down the hallway. 

"I - I was just-"

"Never set foot in that room again. Y'shouldn't even have been able to _find_ that door," she said, glancing up and affording her TARDIS a very pointed look. "From now on, Yaz, y'don't go anywhere I don't explicitly tell you to. Yes?"

Yaz, petrified and still trying to make sense of what it was that she actually saw, could only nod.

The Doctor exhaled deeply. A second later, she was smiling again as if nothing had even happened. "If y'can't sleep, you may as well make yourself useful and put the kettle on, eh? Y'know how I take it."

With that, the Doctor strode away and disappeared around the corner, leaving a profusely confounded Yaz to scramble to make sense of what had just happened. She looked back towards the door only to find that it was no longer there, and the singing had since faded into somber silence.

It wasn't until later, when Yaz was boiling the kettle, that something occurred to her. She stared into her mug and remembered the rage on the Doctor's face. She had been outright furious to find Yaz in that room; nothing ambiguous about it.

_Anger._

That was an emotion.

Yaz could definitely work with that. 


	3. beg all you like

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yh there’s a lil smut in this chapter but like.. am i proud of myself? absolutely not
> 
> ps just so u know in my head this was gonna be a much lengthier, far more fleshed out fic but since my road trip fic is still ongoing i decided to cut out a lot of stuff so apologies if any of this fic seems rushed or badly paced !

It became a game, for the Doctor.

She wanted to see how far she could get away with pushing Yaz before Yaz inexorably begged her to let her go home; how much the Doctor could put her through before she snapped and realised that there really was no saving her. As if she needed saving. 

Admittedly, jumping in and playing hero that first night had been an unforgivable error of judgement on her part. It was one she wouldn't make again.

And so the games began.

She strung Yaz along to war zones just so that they could try the exotic fruit there - fruit plucked from trees sprouting up through bloodied, red soil.

She'd take a bite of the sweetest purple apple, and the juice would run down her chin, and she'd look at Yaz, who would be noticing for the first time that those weren't twigs snapping beneath their feet. They were bones. They'd return to the TARDIS with a basket full of fruit and a bomb exploding in the background, closing the door on a sick symphony of screams.

The Doctor took Yaz to watch the moment an asteroid collided with a planet and wiped out an entire civilisation in its early stages. She brought popcorn. Extra butter.

Possibly worst of all, the Doctor had taken to flirting with Yaz. Purely because it was mean. Deliciously so. Personal space, as an idea, became meaningless. She'd touch Yaz's face, squeeze her hand, make provocative comments at highly inappropriate moments. Once or twice she wondered if Yaz might have been on the verge of punching her in the face. She never did. Pity.

The Doctor learned quickly that Yaz was willing to put up with a lot from her. Pathetic, really, to surrender so much self respect for a person who couldn't even care less if you fell off the edge of the universe. The Doctor might have laughed if she still did humour. 

Yaz, on the other hand, scarcely saw the funny side. And god, she was constantly _there_. At her side. Over her shoulder. Following her around like a lost puppy. Her constant disapproval rolled off her in waves like a bad smell. That said, she _had_ stayed true to her word. Yaz made sure to stay out of the Doctor's way and avoided pushing her to turn her humanity back on, which worked well for her considering the shit storm of trauma trapped behind that dam in her head.

Sure, Yaz had been the final trigger, but the burning of Gallifrey, the return of the Master, the toppling of her world on its head and the undercurrent of doubt beneath everything she thought she knew - it had all only ever been leading the Doctor to the same decision. 

So as long as Yaz didn't try to force feed all that anguish back to her, everything was kosher. For now, screwing with Yaz was just entertaining enough to justify her place on board the TARDIS. She hadn't found Yaz's limit yet. She intended to amend that.

* * *

A week, or thereabouts, had passed. 

It was inevitable, really, that sooner or later trouble would find them. This was the Doctor, after all. Trouble followed her whether she went looking or not.

The Doctor had taken them to the races. Yaz had regarded the Doctor suspiciously when she told her. Surely there was a catch. She wouldn't simply plan a nice day trip to the races for an overpriced drink and wagers made at the expense of unwilling animals. Ever the clever cat, Yaz was.

They showed up at a dingy arena in the back end of a desert planet, where people were placing bets on horn-backed buffalizards. They had a gory habit of tearing one another apart before making it to the finish line, meaning that you were mostly betting on which was more likely to be left standing over the corpses of its brothers and sisters at the end.

As soon as Yaz realised this, she turned up her nose and left, opting to wait by the TARDIS instead. But really, the Doctor had only been interested in the races because she'd wanted a reaction from Yaz. So, shortly after Yaz left, the Doctor was not far behind.

She'd left the TARDIS in one of the rooms beneath the arena, which is where she was heading when three armed men with salmon-pink skin and tribal tattoos cornered her in the hallway. She recognised the species; a primitive gang race interested only in indulging in their own greed. At present, she wasn't much for judgement. She was, however, all too aware of the unpleasant manner in which they'd left things during their last encounter. The bounty on her head was mighty impressive, at last check.

"You are the Doctor!" they shouted in unison, guns trained squarely at her chest.

"Oh, here we go again," the Doctor sighed. "I really should look into getting that name changed, shouldn't I? Doesn't really suit me anymore. And the implications? Don't even get me started."

"You will come with us!" they barked. 

"Now, why would I do a thing like that?" she asked, unfazed. 

"We have companion!"

"Yaz?" The Doctor considered this. "Fine. Keep her. Maybe you lads'll have better luck getting her to crack a smile once in a while."

The three of them exchanged uncertain looks. This evidently had not been the reaction they were expecting. The Doctor's reputation as being willing to die for her friends had, as ever, preceded her. But she was gonna make herself a new reputation. 

"We are armed!" they said, but they sounded less certain now. 

"An' who says I'm not, eh?"

"Doctor does not use violence!" Their growing doubt was audible. Three men, three guns, and they were absolutely bricking themselves. 

"Doctor's changed a bit since your last encounter, fellas. Had a bit of an upgrade! And since I know how hairy these betting rings can get..." All she did was clench her fist. Her fingers dug into a metal plate affixed to the palm of her hand, expelling a lethal, concentrated shockwave in all directions. All three of them collapsed. The Doctor rolled her eyes. "Primitives." 

She found Yaz where she found her TARDIS - in some shady room presumably used for back alley gambling and roughing up loanees. Yaz was chained to a wide pillar, hands handcuffed behind her. She hadn't heard the Doctor enter the room; the Doctor took a few seconds to take in the state of her. Her head was ducked, chin resting on her chest. A small stream of blood, drying now, was running from her hairline.

Something almost, _almost_ stirred to life in the deepest abyss of the Doctor's hearts. Something dull and unwanted that she chose to neglect.

"I leave you alone for an hour, honestly," the Doctor said, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed.

"Doctor?" Yaz's head snapped up and her shoulder's relaxed as if relieved.

Relief. Even after all this time; after the wringer the Doctor was putting her through. Didn't she realise yet that the Doctor was no safer to her than the creatures who'd knocked her out and tied her up? The Doctor stepped into the room and the door swung shut behind her.

"Guess they were under the impression I'd come for you," the Doctor surmised. 

"Well, you did."

The Doctor nodded her head towards the TARDIS. Yaz's mouth formed a straight line when realisation sunk in. How Yaz still managed to be disappointed or surprised by her apathy was lost on the Doctor. 

"Whatever," Yaz mumbled. "Just get me out and we'll leave."

"Get you out?" The Doctor popped a brow. "Hmm. S'pose I could unchain you - with this," she said as she withdrew the sonic from her coat pocket. "But where's the fun in that? Kinda like this look y'got going on. It's working for you."

"Being chained to a post is working for me?" Yaz reiterated.

"Oh, absolutely."

Yaz looked as if she were internally warring with herself about how best to to respond to the Doctor's inappropriate flirting. Because it wasn't flirting, not really. It was all just a part of the game. They both knew it.

"You like to be in control, yeah?" asked Yaz.

This gave the Doctor pause. _Interesting route to go down, Khan._ She perched on the desk in front of Yaz, hands clutching the edge of the wood on either side of her, and waited to see where she was going with it.

"So," Yaz went on. "What if I give it to you?"

The Doctor's face remained unchanged. "Go on."

"Let's make a deal. If I can't get you to turn your humanity back on in the next forty eight hours, I'll leave the TARDIS for good," Yaz proposed. The Doctor wondered why she was choosing now to make a deal like this, before figuring it didn't matter what miraculous idea she'd scraped up from the bottom of the barrel. Nothing in the universe was going to convince her to flick that switch. "You'll never have to see me again and you can go on not giving a crap about anyone or anything."

"Done," the Doctor said without deliberation.

"But you didn't even hear what I want if I win?"

"Don't need to. You won't," the Doctor stood. "Your twenty four hours starts now."

"I said fort-"

"What's your plan, exactly?" inquired the Doctor. "Y'gonna bore me to tears? Tellin' you, I've come fairly close, so you might stand a chance." She pointed her sonic at the chains.

"Wait," Yaz said hurriedly. She swallowed; the Doctor watched the bob of her throat. "Leave them."

The Doctor lowered the sonic a fraction. There was a pause. "Beg y'pardon?"

"The chains," Yaz clarified. "Leave them on."

Yaz looked up at the Doctor with unflinching eyes and in them the Doctor saw an unequivocal invitation. It was something so black it almost equalled the darkness eclipsing her own eyes of late. The Doctor couldn't deny that she was drawn to it. 

"Lock the door," said Yaz. 

The Doctor didn't once avert her gaze from Yaz as she aimed the sonic at the door over her shoulder. She heard but didn't see the bolt slide shut. Meek little Yaz - who'd have guessed it? The Doctor closed the remaining distance between them, advancing slow as a creeping predator, leisurely rolling up the sleeves of her coat. She leaned in so close to Yaz that their lips were almost touching. 

"Y'think this is what it'll take?" the Doctor whispered.

"I think it's a start," Yaz reasoned. Standing this close, the Doctor could actually _see_ the skin at her neck jumping in time with her thriving pulse. "I think wanting something is proof of humanity. You want me, right, Doctor?"

"Sex is a basic need. Like breathing or eating," countered the Doctor, pressing her hands to the pillar at either side of Yaz. "It means nothing."

"So prove it," Yaz challenged, eyes glued to her lips.

She hadn’t thought it within Yaz’s purview to use sex as manipulation - which is what she was doing; no two ways about it - and almost submitted to a sense of pride at how readily Yaz adapted to and returned the Doctor’s amorality. 

Her callousness.

Not that the Doctor was not to be a most willing participant in this bold endeavour. In point of fact, she only rued that she hadn’t come up with the idea herself. She knew there must have been some reason she hadn’t booted Yaz into an event horizon yet.

The Doctor pressed her leg between Yaz's thighs; watched her fail to resist squirming at the pressure. She curled a corrupt lip and cupped Yaz's chin tightly. "You asked for it."

When she kissed Yaz, it was bruising and harsh and outright dirty. There was no grace to the way she forced her tongue into her mouth and sunk her teeth into the soft flesh of her lower lip. No love at all when she drew blood and grinned. Yaz rocked subconsciously against the Doctor's thigh so the Doctor gripped her by the waist and shoved her harshly against the pillar. Yaz grunted into her mouth. _She_ was in control of this - not Yaz.

The Doctor kneaded Yaz over the fabric of her jeans, groping like a horny teenager in a bathroom stall. She sought some sinister solace in the knowledge that Yaz would doubtless have imagined this - their first time - so many times in so many ways and never once like this. Never helpless, bound, urging on every touch but despising herself wildly for it. 

Unbuckling Yaz's belt in record time, the Doctor's hand dived beneath the fabric of her underwear. Yaz's burning arousal came as no surprise.

"Beg," growled the Doctor, fingers hovering but not touching.

"What?" Yaz gasped, eyelids flying open. 

"C'mon, Yaz, I know you can do it," toyed the Doctor. "Beg."

The Doctor twitched a finger; just enough to graze Yaz softly right where she was dying to be touched. Yaz tensed and the chains scraped noisily against the pillar. The Doctor wouldn't move another muscle until Yaz begged her for it. She said as much with the lopsided animal smile warping her features. 

"Doctor," breathed Yaz. "Just do it. Stop messing about and just-"

"Just what?"

"Just _fuck me_ , okay?" Yaz pleaded. Her resentment was palpable, though whether it was directed at the Doctor or herself was unclear. "Just fuck me. Plea-"

The Doctor entered Yaz without warning. She slid inside with ease; met absolutely no resistance. Yaz took a sharp intake of breath. The Doctor gave her no further time to prepare. She got to work and she worked fast, hard, relentless. The Doctor did not take prisoners. Not anymore.

Yaz moaned into her neck and it was a guttural, religious sound. Had she not been held up by the chains, her legs would no doubt have given way beneath her.

Lips fastened to Yaz's neck, the Doctor slipped another finger inside of her, spurred on by Yaz's gasps and her grunts and the way she panted out her name like a needy prayer. The temptation to bite down on Yaz's jugular was not one the Doctor bothered to resist. When Yaz cried out in some oxymoron of pain and pleasure, it was music to the Doctor's ears.

Yaz tried to catch the Doctor's lips with her own. Rather than grant her the satisfaction, the Doctor pinned Yaz back with a firm hand wrapped around her throat. She squeezed. Her pulse hammered against the Doctor's fingertips madly and it might have been arousal and it might have been fear and it might have been that the two went hand in hand.

The Doctor tilted Yaz’s head skyward to kiss the blood from her split lip. Her tongue came away red with iron and divinity and a nigh on broken will. No wilder honey did exist. 

She could feel how close Yaz was already. How like putty in her hands. 

Sweat mingled with the blood on her forehead. Even gritting her teeth, she couldn’t contain the whimpers that became needier in nature each time the Doctor picked up the pace. 

God, she looked perfe-

The Doctor disregarded the thought before she could even finish it; dropping it like a hot plate. It shattered and she dismissed the slip-up as habit - just something you think in the heat of the moment. And this moment was volcanic.

"Come," she said into Yaz’s mouth, voice low and gravelly with lust. "Come for me. Come on."

Faster and faster still, Yaz climbed ever higher and when she finally reached that glorious summit she did so with the Doctor's hand clamped over her mouth and her teeth buried into the exposed flesh of her shoulder. But then something happened. 

When Yaz came - and moaned hotly into the Doctor's palm, and constricted reflexively around her fingers, and squeezed her eyes tight shut - the Doctor watched her face closely and for one eternal instant her rapture transformed her into some glistening Renaissance muse. It was a second at most, but for that second they were not two people engaged in a filthy, frantic, back-room fuck. They were art, oil on canvas, bliss everlasting.

Somewhere in the recesses of the Doctor's mind, she felt a soft click. It was faint enough to consider negligible, and sure enough the Doctor probed and found no traces of humanity stalking the halls of her barren mind, but something had happened. The dislodging of a stone. The picking of one of a thousand locks.

Now the Doctor's hearts had picked up a few paces and there was a heat between her legs she desperately wanted to see too - wanted Yaz to see to. But desperation was a hair's breadth from real human emotion.

That, she wouldn't have.

 _Twenty four hours_ , she thought as she withdrew from Yaz. _Just last another twenty four hours_.

Yaz, still panting, looked up at the Doctor through dark lashes as if trying to read her face for any clue as to what she was thinking. The Doctor wiped her fingers dry on the fabric of Yaz's shirt. 

"Didn't feel a thing, I'm afraid," she said blandly. "Hope that weren't your only plan."

She released Yaz from the chains with her sonic. The moment they clanged to the ground, Yaz stumbled forwards and only just managed to catch herself on the desk before she, too, ended up on the floor. She glowered at the Doctor, wiping all remnants of blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. 

"You haven't let me try, yet," Yaz argued. 

"Mm, tempting as that is, I just don't think you do it for me," the Doctor lied. "Was fun to watch you squirm though."

The flash of hurt behind Yaz's eyes was as visible as a glowing neon sign. The Doctor afforded her no sympathy; simply chuckled and turned her back. But those hearts still hadn't quite settled and her fingers fumbled, ever so slightly, as she slotted the key into the TARDIS door.

The sooner Yaz returned to Sheffield, the better.

* * *

Once they were safely back inside the TARDIS, Yaz disappeared somewhere deep inside the bowels of the ship. The Doctor had half expected Yaz to be hounding her about her humanity; to be utilising every single second of the time she had left. The Doctor didn't know if it was a bruised ego or another leg of her elusive plan that had caused her disappearing act. Either way, she couldn't complain. 

The closer they came to reaching that deadline, the closer the Doctor came to ridding herself of Yaz once and for all. It wasn't even Yaz, so much, that was the issue. It was the viable threat she posed of reuniting the Doctor with her emotions. 

A couple of hours passed. The Doctor was elbows deep in the mechanical organs of her ship, welding mask pulled down over her face and propane torch to hand, when she heard Yaz scream. 

She sat up and lifted her mask. Head cocked, the Doctor listened. Attuned as ever to the anatomy of the TARDIS and all it housed, all the Doctor made out was the unbroken hum of life coursing through the veins of the ship. She pressed her hand flat against the ground and located Yaz's pulse, too. Irregular but there.

"Nice try," she muttered, and resumed her repairs. Or tried to. The instant her fingers connected to the wiring, a painful jolt of electricity shocked her. "Oi!" The Doctor sucked her finger and glared at the perpetrating wire. She tried again to reach for it, only to meet the same jolting fate. "Oh, for-" the Doctor threw her mask to the side and got to her feet. "Right, fine! Honestly, y'can never just have a bit of P&Q 'round here, can you?"

Only because the TARDIS was in a combative mood, the Doctor set off to investigate Yaz's scream. Following the drum of her heartbeat all the way to the library, she tracked Yaz down to one of the private studies. A burning lantern illuminated the scene. 

Several books were splayed haphazard on the floor and crouched by them was Yaz. She was clutching at her head, her whole body shaking and her face a pained grimace. The Doctor stood over her, trying to work out how this fit. How was this supposed to help Yaz achieve her plan on time?

"Is this part of it? Your plan?" she asked, underwhelmed. "Could use some work, not gonna lie."

"Doctor." Yaz's spoke not words but tremors. "What's wrong with me?"

"A whole host of things, I imagine," the Doctor speculated unhelpfully. Then, when it started to look like maybe Yaz's distress was genuine and not a ploy, she reached for her sonic. "Still. Best to know if it's contagious." She scanned Yaz from head to toe and studied the readings. 

The head, as it turned out, was where the problem lay. 

The Doctor was quick to deduce the cause of Yaz's agony in part because she'd known it to be a possibility since the day she'd returned. That door, that teleport Yaz had gone through back on the slave ship, was never meant for human use. The consequences of using a biologically incompatible technology were serious. 

"Hm," the Doctor sat down on the armchair in the corner of the room, ignoring the dryness in her mouth. "Y'want the good news or the bad news?"

"Doctor," Yaz groaned. She struggled to pull herself up by the shelves on the bookcase. "Just tell me."

"All right, mardy! The good news, subjectively, is that you're not dying," the Doctor announced. She laid the pep on thick, knowing that what followed would subsequently land a much more devastating blow. "The bad news is that you're losing your memories. Your mind'll follow after that."

Standing with her back to the lantern, Yaz's face was but a veil of shadow. She stared at the Doctor. "Can you fix it?" she dared to ask, tone implying she knew better than to expect any kind of comforting answer. The Doctor could offer no salvation now.

"Why would I fix you, Yaz?" the Doctor implored and she sounded almost soft, almost apologetic. Like an actual doctor delivering a terminal prognosis. There was a reason she had once been the first ever person to win a Nobel Prize for acting. "So that you can keep hounding me to switch my humanity back on? So that you can continue to be a pain in my neck? I'm _so_ sorry Yaz, but I'll be honest, this is the best news I've had in ages."

Again, she said all this as if the words tasted like regret and not the sweetest success. She said it as if she cared. The Doctor was not an amateur when it came to twisting the knife.

"You could fix it, though, couldn't you?" Yaz asked. There was no hope there, only a bitter curiosity. Here stood a girl who only wanted her worst suspicions confirmed. She was _asking_ for the twisting of that knife. She needed it, really.

"Sure. It'd be super easy, actually. Memories are kinda my forte," the Doctor gloated. "Dunno why I didn't think of somethin' like this meself, to be honest. Pull the ol' Donna-roo. Woulda spared me a lot of earache. Ah well, guess the universe is doing it for me. Gotta love fate, eh, Yaz?"

Yaz looked broken. A shell, shaking like the hollow thing she was fast becoming. One final plea, one final clutch at straws way beyond her reach. She planted her glassy eyes on the Doctor and said "Please."

"Beg all you like, Yaz," the Doctor leaned into the light that Yaz might better discern her total fucking apathy. "I give you a few hours at most."


	4. i promise you, this won’t be boring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw suicide attempt (kinda)

* * *

**TWO WEEKS PRIOR**

* * *

Yaz was but a silhouette against the window pane.

It was raining in Prague; a horizontal rain that sounded like a storm of knives hammering the walls of the hospital. The tempestuous sky transformed the river running through the heart of the city into something grey and violent. She'd wanted to go for a walk that day. Fresh air helped. Now, it would have to wait.

There was a draught. Yaz's gown rustled. She pressed her forehead against the cool glass, feeling another headache coming on. She kept the lights off in her room to avoid the fluorescent sensitivity.

A doctor sat in the shadows. "I don't think you're ready to leave just yet, Yaz," he said. His voice was as clinical as all the others. "Yaz is the name you settled on, right?"

"I didn't settle on it," Yaz corrected. Her breath steamed the window. "That's my name."

"Do you recall a last name?" He kept his pen poised at the pad open on his lap. Always so bloody poised. Always so infuriatingly professional. 

Yaz was silent for a period of time. "Not yet."

"And have you remembered anything else since we last spoke?" he pressed, eyeing her over the round-rimmed glasses perched on the end of his nose.

Chewing the inside of her lip, Yaz turned and perched against the sill. She looked down at her feet and shrugged. It's not like she didn't know what he thought of her; what they all thought. She thought it too every now and again. That didn't make it any easier to digest.

"Anything more on that woman?" The doctor consulted his notes. "Or the... the blue box?"

Again, Yaz held her tongue. Sighing, the doctor folded his glasses and deposited them into the front pocket of his coat. Yaz knew this to mean that he was about to speak from his heart and not from his notes - for whatever that was worth. She hadn't seen that he had much heart to offer.

"Listen, I know how stressful this process has been for you," the doctor said, forcing his best empathic smile. "But you need to work with me if you expect to be able to disentangle these fictions you've created to fill the gaps in your memory from _actual_ events and _real_ people. Don't you want to find your family, Yaz?"

What a ridiculous question.

Of course she wanted to find her family. And it's not like she wasn't trying, either.

Sometimes Yaz would catch fleeting snippets pertaining to them. A laughter-lined face, the lingering scent of a very particular perfume, the vaguest sensation of a warm hug that could only be paternal in nature. It's just that whenever she tried to hold on to any of these things - to pull at their threads and see what unravelled - she'd hit a wall. 

But the wall was not a wall. 

The wall was somebody else, somebody standing in the way, and Yaz knew that they were the key to unlocking everything. She just knew it. Even if it didn't make one lick of sense.

"I remembered her name," Yaz confessed. 

The doctor sat forward keenly and clicked his pen. "Who?"

"The woman I've been dreaming of," said Yaz. "Her name's the Doctor."

A grim expression passed over the doctor's face. "The... Doctor? That's her name?"

"I know what you're gonna say."

"And what might that be?"

"That I've been in this hospital for three weeks now; that pretty much all of my most solid memories consist of nurses and hospital beds and _doctors_. You're probably gonna say that my subconscious latched onto my surroundings and plucked an identity from a bag in order to fill in the blanks. Am I close?"

He held his palms up. "Does that not sound logical to you?"

It did. It really did.

Yaz knew, if she was being rational, that the things she dreamed of were impossible. As impossible as the beautiful, enigmatic woman persistently cropping up in her dreams or the dark space behind her eyelids. Except that sometimes she heard her voice in her head and it sounded just as clear and just as real - if not more so - than anything else in the world. Even the things she knew to be authentic seemed flimsy and pale in comparison to this shining memory.

And then there was way she felt about her. The way she yearned to do something so innocent as brush a thumb across her cheek; the way she ached to feel the solid pressure of her arms around her waist. At times, Yaz craved this woman so much it hurt with all the blunt force trauma of a battering ram to the ribs.

How could _that_ be anything but true?

"People don't fall out of the sky, Yaz," the doctor reasoned and Yaz hated to hear the things she said reframed within the confines of rationale. "They don't travel time and space inside of a box that's bigger on the inside. Maybe this woman's real. I hope she is, because she sounds great. But right now, she's wrapped up in so many layers of fantasy that I'm worried if you fixate on her, you won't be able to find your way back to yourself. Your real self."

Yaz frowned. "What are you saying, exactly?"

"I'm suggesting you let her go for now." The doctor closed his notepad. Yaz thought about punching him. "You mentioned a possible sister, didn't you? Why don't you spend some time trying to reconnect with the memories of your family instead? They seem to be grounding for you."

"I told you," Yaz huffed, trying not to cringe at the swelling pressure behind her eyes. "It's too warped. It's like they're all behind frosted glass or something. But the Doctor-"

"The Doctor wants to keep you sick. She wants to keep you coddled in the comfort of your fabrications," argued the doctor. The dispassionate sympathy had been surrendered for brutal honesty, apparently. "If you want my genuine medical opinion, this Doctor character is an invention your subconscious has designed to protect you from your reality."

"Yeah, but-"

"If you ever intend to get better, Yaz," he pushed. "Take my word for it: you have to leave the Doctor in the past. Forget about her."

* * *

**PRESENT DAY**

* * *

Yaz felt dizzy with the pain of forgetting.

In an effort to hang desperately on to all the wandering parts of herself, she tried to recall the moments and trivia of her life that should have been second nature; that should have been monolithic. The name of her sister, her address, the high school she went to. She even tried to cast her mind back to the first day she met the Doctor. 

All of it, slipping through her fingers like water, and now the Doctor had left her alone to drown in the fallout.

Panicking, Yaz staggered out of the library and went straight to the med bay. She rummaged frenziedly through the cabinets until she located some miracle drug the Doctor had prescribed to her once following an unfortunate run in with a blowtorch beetle. Yes, that had been exactly as pleasant as it sounded. But these painkillers were something else.

Almost instantly, it palliated the more severe physical symptoms. The groan that escaped Yaz's lips was close to ecstatic. Slowly, that molten agony subsided. The memories, however, were still fading. And fast. She poked around in her mind experimentally and consistently fell through another widening gap in her psyche.

She couldn't go through this again.

She _wouldn't_.

"Focus, Yaz, come on," she urged herself. She'd been doing something before all this. Something important. _The library._

Still wading through a swamp of confusion, Yaz retreated to the library. She stumbled across the mess she'd made and the books upturned on the floor in the study. After picking up the one closest to her, she flipped straight to the dog-eared page she'd marked and tried to jog her memory. The book was a pangalactic tourism and travel guide; the page open on a section about Darillium.

Yaz's eyes skimmed over a few lines and a light went on behind them. It all came flooding back - the humming door, the singing towers, the Doctor's anger. Deliverance. Maybe.

Book in hand, Yaz headed to the console room. 

The Doctor was still making repairs. She hardly glanced at her when she walked in, until Yaz started to read from a highlighted passage in the book. It was lucky for her that she'd had the foresight to mark the right lines or else her scrambled brain might have squandered the last chance she had at making things right. 

"Darillium's most notable claim to fame, and what makes it so popular for tourists, is its two singing towers," she began. 

The Doctor stopped fiddling; straightened. "What on earth are y'doin'?"

"Their song can be heard for miles and miles around, and though nobody - not even the locals - ever seems to be quite sure how the song is produced, most natives will happily agree on one thing: there is no one piece of music to rival it."

The Doctor was laughing, arms folded. "Yaz-"

"But the singing towers are not the only impressive feat unique to this planet," Yaz ploughed on, paying no mind to the thick fog creeping fast over the shoreline of her mind. "Indeed, in recent years, the number of tourists visiting this extraordinary planet has swelled massively due to a widespread rumour that the infamous Doctor once set his blue box down for the entire duration of one twenty four year night."

The Doctor plucked the book from Yaz's hands. Scanning the passage briefly, she proceeded to tear the page out, compress it into a ball, and toss it aside. Her eyes, so dark Yaz wondered if there had ever before been colour in them, settled on Yaz. 

"It says you weren't alone," Yaz managed to remember. "That you were there with your wife." 

"Shouldn't believe everything you read, Yaz." 

"You never mentioned her before," said Yaz. Although, thinking about it now, she couldn't be sure that was true. "Did something happen?" 

"How 'bout we got back to your earlier method of persuasion?" the Doctor suggested. She tucked a lock of hair behind Yaz's ear. "Maybe we should use a gag this time. Keep you nice and quiet. How's that sound?"

"I want to go to Darillium," Yaz said, swatting the Doctor's hand away. "To the singing towers. I want you to take me there."

"Ask me again in a few hours, if y'can remember," the Doctor jibed, already turning her back. 

Yaz grabbed her, hard, by her wrist. "Scared?" she goaded. "Fear's an emotion, too, you know?" She was positive there was something written (in fine print) on the Doctor's face alluding to real, genuine emotion. Grief or maybe something darker. All she had to do was keep applying pressure and those cracks in the facade would splinter; the Doctor's porcelain mask would break at last. 

"I'm not scared, Yaz," the Doctor denied, yanking her arm free. She stepped threateningly deeper into Yaz's personal space. "I'm bored. You're boring me. That's a dangerous thing to do."

Yaz did not back away this time. Instead, she took a nearing step of her own. "I promise you, this won't be boring," she swore. "In fact, if you really don't care about me, you'll probably enjoy this. Doctor, I'm about to give you everything you want. Just take me there. To the towers."

The Doctor searched Yaz. Her face was inscrutable and Yaz thought she was just as likely to fling her into deep space as she was to simply walk away. She did neither. Surprising Yaz, the Doctor took a slow step back. "Fine," she abated, withdrawing to the console. "Who am I to deny a girl her dying wish, eh?"

The Doctor glanced at Yaz intermittently as she piloted them to Darillium, and Yaz noticed every time she did. Were those nerves? Yaz hoped so.

She was losing herself. With every second that passed, more of herself slipped through the cracks and no matter how fervently she tried to cling to the essence of who she was, she knew it was only a matter of time now. That black hole was coming for her.

Soon it wouldn’t matter. 

Yaz tried to mask how terrified she was when the TARDIS set them down with a lurching shudder. She let the Doctor go first that she wouldn't notice the way she wiped her clammy palms against the fabric of her jeans. As soon as she stepped foot outside, however, her dread was forgotten like so much else.

The Doctor had set them down right on top of one of the towers. The view took Yaz's breath away. Literally and figuratively, because the wind whipping around them was so immense that for a few moments Yaz had her own wind knocked out of her.

In contrast to the sunset-scape immortalised in the Doctor's hidden room on the TARDIS, here it was true night. Red sand dunes burned beneath the ink-blue sky and its million luminescent stars. Constellations danced on the horizon and, as if from a length of string, the moon hung larger than life overhead. All of it incredible-

But the music.

God, the music.

Yaz couldn't help but look around; check that there wasn't some holy orchestra, some cherubic choir strumming harpsichords from atop the boulders or behind the outcrops. Incorporeal voices drifted along the tide in the sky, transcending language to nestle somewhere deep in the marrow of Yaz's bones; to burrow with ease into the gradually expanding chasm of her failing mind.

She exhaled. A small degree of tension left her body. _As good a place as any_. 

"So?" the Doctor prompted from behind her. "You've seen it. Ready to leave?"

Yaz looked over her shoulder. Sure enough, there was conflict there. Not between the two of them, but an internal one the Doctor was doing an awful job at concealing. The Doctor was battling with herself in there and Yaz was sure enough of this that she was about to bet her life on it.

"It occurred to me that with me losing my memories, and you losing yourself, soon enough there won't be anybody left in all of time and space to remember that once, we loved each other."

The Doctor squinted against the wind, watching Yaz edge closer to the precipice of the tower. "Tragic. Y'should write a poem."

"You don't think it's sad?" Yaz asked. She wasn't typically afraid of heights but when she dared to peer over the edge, a nauseating bout of vertigo surged to the surface and she jumped backwards. They were very, very high up. She looked at the Doctor. "I loved you, Doctor. Fiercely. And a few hours from now, that love's gonna be erased from the universe forever. No one will even miss it."

"Wind's gonna blow you right off," called the Doctor.

"Do you care?" Yaz asked; hair in her eyes, heart in her throat, thoughts scarcely deviating from the imminent drop. 

"Just an observation."

Yaz nodded. "This place means something to you. I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I wanted to do this somewhere important. It couldn't be just anywhere."

"Do what?" The Doctor's eyes did not falter from Yaz's feet. "All you've done is monologue so far, which I thought were my thing."

"I know I was only the final straw. That's why you won't turn it back on, right?" Yaz faced the Doctor and the moon glowed vivid in her irises - every rock and every crater. "My death pushed you _over_ the edge but you'd been at the edge for a while already. You don't wanna go back there. I understand, I really do."

Yaz winced; her hand shot to her head. Another wave of forgetting. "I'm forgetting it all; I can feel it. It's like all my memories are just withering. There'll be nothing left soon. Which is why this is easy for me."

"Think your mind's startin' to go, too, 'cause you're not making one bit of sense," the Doctor reckoned, though the speculation was entwined with uncertainty.

Yaz regarded the Doctor with an immeasurable amount of sorrow. "This is for her, not you," she said. Yaz reached out a tender hand, rested her palm against the Doctor's cheek. The Doctor only looked back blankly. "Just in case." She pressed a chaste, salty kiss to the Doctor's lips. The Doctor did not reciprocate. She also did not recoil. 

Yaz pulled back and allowed herself a few short seconds to do nothing but take in the Doctor under the light of a hundred constellations and a moon five times larger than her own. Her hand fell from the Doctor's face.

She backed away.

Towards the edge.

"How long do you think it'd take?" Yaz wondered, eyes flitting downward. "To reach the bottom?"

"Thirty four seconds," the Doctor replied. Her face was laden with reservation. "Give or take a millisecond. Why are you asking?"

"Do you think that's enough time?"

"For what?"

"For you to save me.”

The Doctor scoffed. "Don't be stupid, Yaz."

Yaz's heels felt for the lip of the tower. Her stomach listed when she almost lost her footing and fell backwards. Was it her imagination, or did the Doctor just tense? 

"I don't wanna die, Doctor. I really don't," Yaz professed. Her voice broke at the first syllable of the Doctor's name. "Which is mad, 'cause that's not always been the case. Used to think there was no way out until you showed up with your daft face and your daft box. You saved me then. Showed me that there was another way out. And now here I am, standing on the edge, and I really don't want to die. I want to _live_."

"So then don't jump," the Doctor said. "It's really that simple."

"What, and forget it all instead? Forget you? That's just death of another kind," Yaz proclaimed. The voices on the wind were proximate to screams now. "I won't go back to that void. I won't live another day if it's not really me and it _won't_ be me because you won't be there. So I might as well take this risk for you. To bring you back."

"Yaz, you're being horrendously idiotic right now," the Doctor shouted over the everlasting song. "I won't save you. You'll just die. Do you understand? You'll be dead."

Yaz smiled sadly. "For a second there, Doctor, it almost sounded like you cared."

The Doctor clenched her teeth. "I don't."

"Okay," breathed Yaz. She was ready, now. As ready as she ever would be. "So don't catch me."

And so she pushed away from the edge.

Arms outstretched, face turned to the universe, Yaz fell like a flightless bird from the top of the singing tower.

* * *

Three seconds could feel like an eternity for a Time Lord.

In the three seconds following Yaz's departure from solid ground, the Doctor relived the entirety of her time spent in Yaz's company thus far.

She relived the sensation of running for her life whilst holding Yaz's hand and the thrill of not knowing which was making her hearts beat so manically. She relived the enormous comfort Yaz had provided in the months following her regeneration, when she was still grieving so much and trying so hard to be kind. Somehow, Yaz made being kind the easiest thing in the universe.

The Doctor revisited Yaz's constant professions of loyalty. " _More of you..._ " " _I'm with you.._." " _Whatever happens..._ " They packed no less of a heartrending punch the second time around. 

She remembered the first time she admitted to herself that she was in love with Yaz. Of all things, it had been while she was tying her shoelaces. That's it. Yaz had been tying her shoelaces, and there was this little crease between her brows while she concentrated, and the Doctor had thought: _I'm in love with you_.

So many restless nights after that; so much fretting and detachment and countless internal debates about the actual scientific distance of 'arm's length.' But of course that busy head always went quiet whenever Yaz was close by. Her hand on her shoulder, a light touch on the back, the warmest of smiles in the fucking cosmos. Yaz made her dumb and in times like those, the Doctor had never been so content.

The Doctor cast her mind back to Yaz, dying.

Miles away in a death trap of her design.

Gut coiled tight like a spring, she remembered ash raining down from a sky ablaze. It settled on her shoulders; got caught in her hair. She'd wondered, at the time, if any of it was Yaz. That was the thought that drove her to homicide. 

Propelled by unfettered rage not yet marred by the devastation of grief, the Doctor's hands had been the calmest they'd ever been when she'd detonated a switch that would doom a room full of living beings to a fiery but not quite instant demise. Oh, she made certain they'd be able to feel their skin charring; their blood boiling. The pure, unending hatred she'd felt had not been a burning sun but a vacuum all-entombing. 

That day, she was no Doctor at all. She did not know mercy nor sympathy, only revenge and a cavernous hole in her chest that would never be filled.

In the days after, she'd built Yaz's body from scratch using DNA left behind on the TARDIS. Hairbrush, leather jacket, pillow. The only gift she could offer Yaz's family after taking everything from them: closure. Like that meant a thing. But this had been her finest work to date. The likeness so uncanny it had the Doctor breaking to pieces beside her body, retching up nothing because when was the last time she'd even eaten? Would she ever eat again? 

If there had been some formula, a recipe to follow to reconstruct the elixir of Yaz’s life, the Doctor would have spent an eternity seeking each ingredient that she might endow it upon this body and bring her back to life. The Doctor cursed that she was not a god. 

And that's when she knew she had gone too far.

In loving Yaz, in losing her, the Doctor had strayed from a steadfast path she'd long ago vowed never to let out of sight. The Doctor was not supposed to house hatred in her bones. Certainly, she was not supposed to act on it. Never vengeful - was that not a promise she had made to an old friend who'd only held her best interests at heart?

This. This was why she was not supposed to care so much.

But Yaz - oh, Yaz.

Brilliant Yaz.

Dead Yaz.

The Doctor couldn't go on down this path. She couldn't see straight or think clearly or even peel off those clothes that still reeked of death and smoke. There was only one way out of this; one way to survive losing Yaz on top of every other fucking horror in her life.

So she'd done it.

In the name of self-preservation, the Doctor had stood at her console, apologised softly to a holographic echo of Yaz whipped up by the TARDIS, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she looked at Yaz and felt nothing. 

Another wave of remembering hit like a tsunami. 

Making cruel jokes over Yaz's grave, brushing off Ryan and Graham while they grieved, slitting a man's throat right in front of Yaz's eyes, leaving her chained to a pillar while she-

 _No_.

And now?

And now Yaz had decided to jump from the towers of Darillium rather than forget, the way the Doctor had so carelessly forgotten. She'd jumped to bring the Doctor back, and to remind her that she loved her.

She loved Yasmin Khan.

Yasmin Khan was about to die.

Three seconds. The Doctor sprang into action three seconds later than she should have. A month later than she should have. Valuable time lost, yes, but there was still hope. No impossibility where hope was involved. 

She raced to the console, a blur in motion, hearts rapid but hands steady. She wouldn't lose Yaz again.

She refused.

As she hastily tethered herself to the centre column, she flew the TARDIS to the side of the towers, locking onto Yaz's vitals. When she flung the doors open, the TARDIS was falling alongside Yaz. According to the Doctor's body clock, fifteen seconds had passed.

"Take my hand!" she screamed. 

Yaz, wide-eyed and too gripped by terror to exhibit any kind of relief, reached for the Doctor's outstretched hand. The TARDIS lurched, amassing endless inches between their fingers. The Doctor cursed. She pulled at a string connecting her finger to a lever and steered herself closer. Both their arms extended towards one another and they were close but not close enough. 

The Doctor gave it everything she had; exerted every last cell in her body. Fingertips touched. Fumbled. The Doctor's hand, after a small eternity, clamped around Yaz's wrist. She yanked her inside.

Doors slamming shut behind her, the Doctor tugged at the string connecting her to the console and after a core-shaking upwards pitch, everything went still.

The sound of their heavy, jagged breathing filled the room. The Doctor lay with Yaz sprawled awkwardly on top of her, elbow digging into her hip and dark hair fanned across her face. But she'd done it, this time. She'd _saved_ her. Yaz was okay. Everything would be okay.

"Yaz?" The Doctor propped herself up on her elbows and looked down. "Are you all right?"

Yaz pinched the bridge of her nose. Eyelids fluttering open, her pupils darted nervously about the room before landing eventually on the Doctor. The Doctor saw that glowing vacancy sign even before Yaz spoke. 

"Where am I?" she asked, prompting the Doctor's blood to drain from her face. "And who - who _are_ you?"

* * *

Re-circuiting Yaz's mind took time.

As did reestablishing trust.

A lot had been taken, twisted, damaged. The Doctor spent painstaking hours over the course of several days carefully tending to her every memory. So many doors to reopen, creases to smooth over, tears to patch up. When she'd first gotten to it, Yaz's mind had been a wasteland. 

The Doctor spent so long inside Yaz's head, inside her nightmares both real and imagined, that sometimes she would open her eyes to find Yaz wiping a tear from her face.

"It wasn't your fault," she would say, once time enough had passed for her to remember her affections toward the Doctor. 

The Doctor wouldn't say anything in return. 

Three days after Darillium, they were in the med bay after a long and draining session of memory correction. Yaz lay in bed with the Doctor perched at the edge of the mattress, fingers pressed gently to her temples. The Doctor, eyes closed, hadn't noticed how closely Yaz had been watching her. Until she opened them, and was met with such raw feeling that she had to withdraw. 

"Is everything okay?" the Doctor worried, voice spiking with concern. 

"Will it ever be the way it was?" asked Yaz. The question had emerged from out of the blue. "Will I get it all back?"

The Doctor stammered for a suitable response. "I mean, I'm doing my very best, but-"

"But you're no doctor?"

Their eyes locked. Yaz smiled and the Doctor rolled her eyes playfully. "Sometimes things might get a bit confusing, I won't lie," she confessed. "Y'might feel a little hazy now and again. Or have strange dreams. If that happens, just let me know and I'll try to make it better for you. I'll do anything I can."

Yaz swallowed thickly. "Just - just don't feel that you have to keep trying to make up for this."

"You almost died, Yaz. Twice," the Doctor reminded her. "I'll never stop trying to make up for that." 

Even though the Doctor's humanity was back now, and even though all she'd wanted to do since that happened was pull Yaz into her arms and never let her go, the guilt plaguing her was so strong that she'd hardly touched Yaz except to mend and retrieve her memories. It had felt like there was a wall separating them even still - which the Doctor understood, because what she'd put Yaz through was unforgivable.

That didn't make it any less unbearable.

The first day, especially (during which she’d been but a stranger to Yaz), had been a lamentable twenty four hours for both to endure. Yaz had fought tirelessly against the Doctor’s every effort to reel her back in from the fringes of amnesia and insanity. It didn’t help that some of Yaz’s first memories to return were the more recent ones; the ones in which the Doctor was nothing short of a villain (and oh, to see herself through Yaz’s eyes. To behold the monster she let herself become. Why had Yaz ever stayed?)

It was only once the Doctor tunnelled her way through to their earlier memories together that Yaz unbent. Fear became wariness became recognition became love. When Yaz’s love returned, the Doctor felt as enveloped by it as if she’d just fallen into a warm pool. Yaz’s mind, previously a block of marble the Doctor had been arduously carving away at, softened like clay. Yaz dealt no more resistance after that.

Now she leaned forwards, hands clasped together atop the duvet. "One of the memories you restored today," she broached delicately. Given her inability to meet the Doctor in the eye, the Doctor thought she might know the one Yaz was referring to. "Was it true, what you told me? When you said you did love me back?" The question was a timid thing; afraid of the very answers is sought.

The Doctor made to take Yaz's hand. Inches from contact, she thought better of it and let it fall flat on the sheets between them instead. "I do love you, Yaz," she professed. "But look around. Look at where my love got you."

"No, _my_ love got me here," Yaz refuted. Unlike the Doctor, she had no qualms about reaching for her hand. She locked their fingers together. "Your love saved me."

Oh, how the Doctor wished that to be true. 

“You don’t believe me,” Yaz stated.

“I don’t. I want to, but I don’t.”

Yaz exhaled deeply through her nose, mouth a straight line. “I’d follow you anywhere, Doctor; do anything for you. If you asked me to die for you, I would. I know it’s not what you wanna hear but that’s the way I love. Actually, no - it’s just the way I love _you_. Your loving me back had no bearing on what happened. I’d still have been on that ship, still have gone through that door, still have lost myself.”

”I don’t get it; why aren’t you angry?” asked the Doctor, perplexed by Yaz’s lack of rage or resentment. “Why aren’t you even a little bit scared of me? The things I did to you-“

“How can I hate you? You made a selfish decision while you were grieving. Every decision you made after that, up ‘til the decision you made to turn your humanity back on, wasn’t you,” Yaz reasoned ardently. “I hate _that_ person. That’s somebody I never wanna see again as long as I live. But you, I’ll trust forever.”

A protest was already climbing up the Doctor’s throat but apparently Yaz saw it coming a mile away.

”Doctor, would you just stop trying to find a way to reject my forgiveness? It’s yours. I forgive you. There’s nothing you can say that’s gonna change my mind.”

The Doctor’s many objections met their untimely deaths upon her tongue as she sat and beheld this girl and her miraculously beating heart and the adoration on her face she knew she’d never be worthy of. “I don’t deserve you, Yasmin Khan.”

Yaz gave a granting tilt of her head. “Yeah, I know.”

A forlorn smile formed on the Doctor’s face. "It's never gonna be easy with me, you understand? It'll never be simple."

"Who said I want simple?" Yaz challenged. "I know who you are, and I knew what I signed up for when I gave my heart to you, Doctor."

“Y’know it’s not too late to take it back?” the Doctor said, and she was only half joking. 

"Never," replied Yaz, and she wasn't joking.

Not even a little bit.

And the Doctor couldn't help but kiss her. It was the first kiss they'd shared that the Doctor had actually been able to feel; the first one that meant something. Yaz tasted like medicinal lollipops and absolution. She smiled against the Doctor's mouth and it was such a human thing to do that the Doctor wanted to cry for all the ways she'd hurt her.

They broke apart. Yaz brushed a thumb over the Doctor's cheekbone. "I'm so glad you're back," she whispered.

"Me too."

"Which reminds me," Yaz said. "I won."

The Doctor arched a brow. "What did you win?"

"Our deal. I got you to turn your humanity back on within the allotted timeframe, remember? But you never asked me what I wanted if I won."

"Okay," the Doctor indulged her. "What do you want?"

"I want you to make a promise. Here and now." The earnest look Yaz gave the Doctor fastened her to the spot. "That you'll never flick that switch again. No matter what happens to me, no matter how many lifetimes pass and how many people you lose. You can never go back to that awful place. Promise me."

Subdued by the weight of the request (and besieged once more by the eviscerating recollection of Yaz’s arrant fear, directed justly towards herself),  the Doctor was quiet for a few unsteady beats. “Believe me,” she implored, enunciating every word to steer clear of the haze of elusiveness. “That’s the easiest promise I’ll ever make.”

"So make it.”

"I promise you, Yaz, that I’ll never flick that switch again,” the Doctor pledged. And of course she meant it. She knew now that whenever she next came close to turning it all off, which might conceivably be very soon, she’d be confronted with the memory of Yaz falling from the top of the singing towers, plummeting past distant constellations towards a wrenching fate she’d only narrowly avoided.

If that was not a powerful deterrent, surely nothing was.

The tightness in Yaz’s shoulders softened. She leaned back against the pillow. “Good. Don’t be surprised if I get you to make the same promise every day for the rest of my life, either. Doctor, you snogged a _Judoon._ ”

The Doctor laughed. “Not my proudest moment, I’ll grant you that.” She squeezed Yaz’s hand. “Look, it’s been a long day. I’ll leave you to get some rest, yeah? We’ll carry this on later.”

Yaz nodded, stifling a yawn. “Don’t worry, though, if we don’t get it all back,” she said as the Doctor rose to her feet. “We can always make new memories, yeah? Better ones.”

“Oh, we will,” vowed the Doctor. “And I’d like to see anyone try and take those away.”

With that, she pressed a soft kiss to the top of Yaz’s head and left her to get some sleep. Closing the door behind her, she turned one of Yaz’s recently recovered memories over in her mind like a stone. 

Yaz had been tying her laces. 

For no particular reason, she’d looked up. At the Doctor. Who’d been watching her so closely. Their eyes met for one charged moment before the Doctor quickly averted her attention as if eye contact stung the way looking directly at the sun stings. The Doctor cleared her throat and launched into a lengthy technobabble spiel for nobody’s apparent benefit except her own, waving her hands like a lunatic and deliberately avoiding Yaz’s eyes all the while. 

And for the first time, Yaz caught herself thinking: _I’m in love with you_. 

The Doctor allowed herself the smallest of smiles. 

Yaz had been right, up there on the tower. It would have been a tragedy to forget a love like theirs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr: freefallthirteen


End file.
